University of B.C. student Taylor Wale didn’t find her calling until after she had enrolled in the university’s Sauder School of Business, and it wasn’t in business. Call it a slow-burning epiphany in which she recalled fond memories of travelling to her family’s territory near Hazelton to fish every summer, and related those to the summer jobs she was finding in the resource sector and the impacts those industries have on the land.

Taylor Wale, a Gitxsan First Nation student in the UBC faculty of forestry, is working towards a career as a conservation biologist in First Nations forestry planning. She recently won a Skills Award for Aboriginal Youth, presented by the Forest Products Association of Canada and Canadian Council of Forest Ministers. NICK PROCAYLO / PNG

University of B.C. student Taylor Wale didn’t find her calling until after she had enrolled in the university’s Sauder School of Business, and it wasn’t in business.

Call it a slow-burning epiphany in which she recalled fond memories of travelling to her family’s territory near Hazelton to fish every summer, and related those to the summer jobs she was finding in the resource sector and the impacts those industries have on the land.

“I started piecing together where I’m from, what matters to me — especially working in a resource-exploiting place with my cousins in the territory familiar to me. So I kind of ended up in forestry,” Wale said.

Of Gitxsan First Nation heritage, Wale’s hope now is to wind up work in First Nations communities, learn their values and help represent their interests in planning for forestry to make sure they are represented in development.

Wale is now in her third year of natural resource conservation studies (following three years of business school), and her academic standing, along with the leadership role she has taken among students in the faculty of forestry and UBC’s First Nations House of Learning has earned her a 2015 Skills Award for Aboriginal Youth from the Forest Products Association of Canada and Canadian Council of Forest Ministers.

Wale was presented the award, along with co-winner Patrice Bellefleur, an Innu from Pessamit, Que., at a ceremony in Toronto during the Canadian Association of Native Development Officers conference.

The Sun caught up with her recently to find out what she wants to accomplish and what motivates her.

Q: What’s your favourite memory of being in the outdoors and nature when you were growing up?

A: We harvested our own salmon every summer, so we would go up to where we’re from in Hazelton and go to my grandpa’s net, do dip-netting, collect hundreds of fish every summer and spend weeks canning them. That was the best times. We’d drive down logging roads and just hang out in the forest or hang out on the trapline, and just really like where you’re from. That’s what’s guiding me to where I want to go.

Q: How did you wind up in business school first?

A: Basically, I had good grades coming out of high school and had a friend at UBC Sauder who said, ‘It’s this great school and you’re going to love it. If you get the grades and can get in, it’s so cool.’ I got in and thought it was really exciting, but I didn’t really research what I wanted to be. It was literally by default because I thought it would be fun, but I had no interest (in it) whatsoever.

Q: How did your experiences growing up influence the course you are following now?

A: I ended up not in a place where I was influenced to be, business. And it kind of came back to me when I’d come back on my own terms, not with my parents, to go up to Hazelton and spend time with family and on the land without them. It didn’t really hit me as I was growing up, I kind of pieced it together on my own.

Q: Why did you decide that you wanted to become a biologist?

A: I worked in industry previously where resource development was a problem. I was kind of thinking how could I make an improvement or make a position for myself in this where I could maybe build frameworks where it’s always good. Working on the consultation development process of resource development was what I was into. That’s what led me to forestry.

Q: What contribution do you want to make to the industry as you advance into a career?

A: Now that I’m piecing together my values, my connection to place, my connection to the land as well as the biology side of it, I want to do Aboriginal community forestry planning or conservation planning. Basically (it’s) where you go and live in small communities, get to know their values and needs in relation to forest practices or conservation initiatives and you speak the jargon of government and forest policies and communicate their needs and rights in a way that appeases both industry and the (First) Nation.

Q: Thinking of the jobs that you’ve already had in this field, what things/experiences have amazed you?

A: The most important things I’ve been encountering lately (are through) my mentor at school, my boss now and also the Aboriginal liaison in forestry, Andrea Lyall. She’s a professor, and the work she is doing is the essence of what I want to be when I grow up, she’s amazing. It’s a reciprocity model where you both have sets of values and you integrate them into one plan, you’re not assimilating individuals into industry. And she’s doing side projects, teaching us and she’s mentoring us, she’s just busy, amazing woman.

Q: What is your favourite place, and why?

A: The Skeena River, hands down. My family is from there and going there every single summer and feeling like this is the only thing that matters — these rivers and the fish and the forest surrounding it and (finding) a way to keep the people on the river and the forest remaining.

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